Not “liking” new Facebook feature

Posted by Chris Ellis on
Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 7:26 pm

I’m sure some of you have noticed Facebook’s newest feature: the ability to “like” your friend’s status updates, posted items, or shared media. All this feature does it alert the poster that the item or story is liked, by you. “Chris likes this” it would say. That’s all. If you really like it, why not just make a comment and be somewhat insightful, funny or rude? To me, this feature is almost as useless as the “poke,” and offers nothing more than to say “Yes, I am aware of your presence on Facebook.” Is this just another way of passively trying to initiate contact? Why is there no “dislike” button? I think that would be more fun, as I dislike many things that I read on Facebook. I’m sure I’d get my fair share of “disliked” notifications as well. That could actually be a good way to weed out the Facebook friends you have little in common with. Too many dislikes? How about a message pops up alerting you that “Chris has disliked 10 of your posted items. Would you like to un-friend him?” I’d probably click “yes.” And like it.

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13 Comments, Comment or Ping

ivsyd

“Like/dislike” is a really powerful filtering tool that might be utilized for organizing the overwhelming data poured into the platform by countless users. There is no algorithm that would be able to complete this task better than humans, giving “thumbs up” and “thumbs down.” I wonder if this new feature was somehow supposed to be related to the Facebook’s new TOS case[scandal]…
…Like an attempt to filter the content they own…

Feb 26th, 2009
Griffin Farley

It allows Facebook to record sentiment which social media monitoring services have been having trouble measuring due to sarcastic tones that fuel the bloggersphere.

Feb 27th, 2009
Margery Nabors

I think if your FB “likes” can be linked to your news feed, it could serve as an interesting filter. Think Pandora; your “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” determines what future songs are served. Wouldn’t it be cool if what you liked was reflected in your news feed? And, of course what you disliked was reflected by simply not being published in your feed.

Feb 28th, 2009
Margery Nabors

I think if your FB “likes” can be linked to your news feed, it could serve as an interesting filter. Think Pandora; your “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” determines what future songs are served. Wouldn’t it be cool if what you liked was reflected in your news feed? And, of course it would be nice if what you disliked was reflected by simply not being published in your feed at all.

Feb 28th, 2009
jaysh

I think they rolled it silently to see response, if they can compile enough data, I am sure they will use it. I agree that filters and network ranking would be the most obvious choice, i.e. “10 of your friends liked this video”.

Mar 3rd, 2009
ivsyd

Jay,
I don’t think they would go for it intentionally. Maybe such kind of a PR fire isn’t easily foreseen, but the consequences could be too hard to deal with.

Mar 3rd, 2009
Chris Ellis

Sarcastic tones? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Mar 5th, 2009
Matthew "Mattso" Stringer

FB is just milking us for more measurables. Wait until the irony fiat lays waste to their plans. Start liking stuff that sucks!

Mar 5th, 2009
Nicole

Can I love or hate it?

…

This gives us a better idea of who is looking at our personal content.

Facebook needs to introduce user analytics friendly for the layman user. I’d like to know how many times, say, a picture or video was viewed or a note was read. Right now I only know if a friend looked at something I posted if they responded in any way to it.

Does this exist and I just don’t know it yet?

Mar 5th, 2009
Annie Lee

Agreed with Matt – FB is just looking for another way to measure their audience. Can you blame them though? They are a business looking to monetize and trying to use their critical mass to good use.

I think the new feature is brilliant. It is a seemingless approach to gather data. This feature is the main foundation of Digg.com – and it’s how they survive.

Mar 6th, 2009
Chris Ellis

I understand the usefulness in measuring and compiling data on what users are interested in. This works for posted items like videos, news stories etc. But what about status updates? “Annie Lee is making waffles.” <<<Chris likes this. What does that measure exactly?

Mar 9th, 2009
jaysh

If Chris indicates he likes “Annie making waffles”, then maybe Annie will invite him to come have waffles. Think of it as increased possibilities of sociability through FB.

Mar 9th, 2009
ivsyd

Another angle:
Most of 160-characters-long recommendations on the sites like Blippr and Goodrec are “Likes” (despite both “Like” and “Dislike” features are available). People just don’t bother themselves posting about the stuff they don’t like unless they really hate it.

Mar 31st, 2009